Bug#698408: Weak package description

[Justin B Rye]

Martin Eberhard Schauer wrote:
> Dear Multimedia Maintainers,
> thank you for maintaining rev-plugins.
> 
> I'm sorry that to me the package description seems problematic. And I'm aware
> that it's "just a library" that gets pulled in. The average user should not
> need the description to decide whether he needs it …

LADSPA is a sort of "audio development" system, so people who want a
reverb function need to be able to find it (or at least pick it out of
the "Suggests: ladspa-plugin" alternatives from an audio-editor like
audacity).  And let's not forget that people who want other things out
of Section: sound (such as plugins for CD-ripping or spectrography or
VoIP software) need to be able to recognise it as something they can
ignore.

For context, the package description is currently:

# Description: gverb-like ladspa plugin
#  This reverb is based on gverb by Juhana Sadeharju,
#  but the code (now C++) is entirely original.
#  Second input for stereo operation,
#  and some code to prevent FP denormalisation
#  was added.

This is just a cut-down version of the initial release notes:

# This reverb is based on gverb by Juhana Sadeharju, but the code
# (now C++) is entirely original. I added a second input for stereo
# operation, and some code to prevent FP denormalisation.
# This is a preliminary release, and this plugin will probably change
# a lot in future versions.

> Nevertheless:
>  - It uses uncommon (FP) and misspelled abbreviations (LADSPA = Linux Audio
>    Developer's Simple Plugin API). (1)
>  - There are "plugins" in the package name, but there is just one plugin inside.
>    But that seems to originate from upstream. (2)

(linuxaudio.org is dead and gone)

>  - For people who don't know gverb the comparison is quite useless.

On the other hand gverb is available in Debian, hidden away in
swh-plugins.  The docs for that say it's "a mono in, stereo out
reverb implementation by Juhana Sadeharju".

> I would be more comfortable with something like:
> 
> Description: reverb LADSPA plugin
>  This reverb features two inputs for stereo operation,
>  and some code to prevent floating point denormalisation.

Here come my nitpicks.
 1) The two inputs aren't so much a "feature" as a widening of what
	it supports relative to gverb - apparently it can do not
	only "mono in, stereo out" but also "stereo in, stereo out".
 2) Just as users don't need to know that it's in C++, it seems
	inappropriate to focus on the fact that the developer had
	trouble with some particular esoteric number-crunching error
	in the code.  Or is FP denormalisation really something that
	audio buffs are expected to know and care about?
 3) This package may be a bad place to start, but wouldn't it be
	nice if LADSPA plugins all had a few lines of boilerplate to
	indicate what a LADSPA plugin is and why I might want one?
	Luckily ladspa.org offers a perfectly adequate intro.

So how about:


  Description: reverb LADSPA plugin
   This plugin provides a reverberation effect based on gverb but
   supporting stereo-to-stereo as well as mono-to-stereo operation.
   .
   The Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API is a standard that
   allows software audio processors and effects to be plugged into a
   wide range of audio synthesis and recording packages.


(If we still had an "isation" I would suggest standardization, but
it's already gone.)
-- 
JBR	with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
	sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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